This is a high-autonomy role for an engineer who enjoys working close to the business. You will partner directly with product, operations, and other frontline stakeholders to review and solve high-priority software problems, evaluate opportunities based on return on investment, and deliver practical software that improves how our teams operate.
You will also help establish the technical practices and operating standards for a growing engineering organization. Over the following six months, you will participate in interviewing, hiring, and mentoring additional engineers joining the team.
What You’ll Do
Take full ownership of “the how” regarding major product features, from architectural approach and technical design through implementation, quality assurance, deployment, monitoring, and production support.
Design, build, and maintain reliable backend services using Java and Spring.
Maintain and evolve our database architecture, data models, and queries to support performance, reliability, and future scale.
Build and harden front-end features to production quality, collaborating with product and using AI-assisted design and development tools where appropriate.
Work directly with product, operations, and front-line team members to understand workflows, identify inefficiencies, and design effective software solutions.
Develop a strong understanding of our fast-moving business and help prioritize technical investments based on customer impact, operational value, and ROI.
Use AI-assisted coding tools, such as Codex, Claude Code, or similar platforms, as a regular part of your development workflow while maintaining high standards for testing, review, security, and maintainability.
Deploy, monitor, and support applications running on AWS, including cloud maintenance and security in accordance with ISO 27001 and 27701 frameworks, contributing to the reliability and operational maturity of our production environment.
Participate in a shared production-support rotation during New York business hours, initially in partnership with our New York-based engineer.
Help design the incident-response, monitoring, documentation, and on-call practices that the growing engineering team will use.
Contribute to technical architecture, engineering standards, development processes, and decisions about when to improve existing systems versus introduce new technologies.
Participate in interviewing and selecting backend, frontend, and platform engineers as the team grows.
Provide technical guidance, mentorship, and thoughtful code and design reviews to other engineers.
What We’re Looking For
Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university required. A degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related technical field is preferred but not required.
Typically 5 or more years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent evidence of Staff-level technical ownership and impact.
Deep professional experience with backend development, including ownership of database-driven web applications in production.
Strong proficiency in Java and hands-on experience with Spring or Spring Boot.
Strong experience with relational database design, data modeling, performance optimization, and production database management.
Advanced SQL skills, including the ability to write and optimize queries used for application functionality, troubleshooting, reporting, and business intelligence.
Professional experience contributing to front-end web applications and the ability to deliver production-quality user-facing features.
Experience deploying, operating, monitoring, and troubleshooting production applications on AWS.
Demonstrated ownership of production systems throughout their lifecycle, including incident response, root-cause analysis, and long-term reliability improvements.
Demonstrated experience using AI-assisted coding tools, such as Codex, Claude Code, or similar tools, as part of a regular software-development workflow.
Experience implementing technical controls in environments subject to GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or comparable security and privacy requirements.
Strong product and business judgment, including the ability to translate operational problems into appropriately scoped technical solutions.
Strong written and verbal English communication skills, with the confidence to work directly with engineers, product, operations, and business stakeholders.
Experience working with a high degree of autonomy, making sound technical decisions, and communicating tradeoffs clearly.
Ability to maintain regular working-hour overlap with U.S. Eastern time for real-time collaboration and production support.
Strong accountability, follow-through, and time-management skills in a fast-moving environment.
Preferred Qualifications
The following experience would be valuable, but we do not expect every candidate to have all of it:
Strong experience with Vue.js or another modern JavaScript front-end framework.
Experience with Kotlin.
Experience with Python.
Experience integrating generative AI models or AI-powered capabilities into production applications.
Experience building AI-enabled CRM, workflow, search, or knowledge-management features.
Experience with infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, observability, cloud security, or other platform-engineering practices.
Experience working effectively across time zones in a distributed or remote-first engineering organization.
Previous experience interviewing, hiring, mentoring, or providing technical leadership to other engineers.
Relevant and current AWS, security, database, or software architecture certifications.
What Success Looks Like
Within your first several months, you will
Build a strong understanding of the application, its architecture, and the business workflows it supports.
Take ownership of meaningful product features across the backend, database, and front end.
Establish trusted working relationships with our New York-based engineer and Product and Operations stakeholders.
Improve the reliability, maintainability, monitoring, and documentation of the production system.
Help establish practical production support and incident-response practices.
Use AI-assisted development tools effectively while maintaining clear accountability for code quality and system behavior.
Contribute to the hiring and onboarding of the engineers who will form the next stage of the team.
Help create a technical foundation that allows the engineering organization to grow without losing speed, quality, or connection to the business.
Why True North Insights
True North Insights offers a dynamic, high-performance culture where ambitious professionals grow quickly and own meaningful work from day one.
Join the Manila office of one of the world’s fastest-growing expert networks.
You will work alongside our HQ in NYC. Be part of a fun, friendly, and family-oriented culture.
Diverse project exposure.
Compensation: Gross monthly base salary of PHP 100,000-PHP 130,000 (inclusive of night differentials), depending on relevant experience, technical depth, leadership experience, and demonstrated alignment with the scope of the role.
Discretionary annual performance bonus of up to 8% of annual base salary.
Benefits: Day 1 HMO for the employee, life insurance, vacation leave, US holiday leave, paid sick leave, 13th month, and government/social benefits.
Monthly transportation allowance of PHP 1,200
Perks: Free snacks, paid trainings, Monday breakfast, and regular team events.
At True North Insights, growth is earned—not given. You’ll be challenged, supported, and trusted to lead.
